What should I plan to pay an experienced freelance writer to develop some characters and a story for my game? Are they typically paid by the hour or on a per word or per page basis? Thanks in advance.

Hmm, for a game is different than regular short story rates or editing rates (those are anywhere from $1-10 per 250 word page). A game story is much more like a play script where you pay a licenseing/exclusive use fee and a percentage of royalties. Are you offering royalties or only a 1-time fee?

At any rate, I would say it depends both how much story you need and how much profit you expect to make on the finished game. For a game something like Super Mario, with only a few characters and minimal story, $25-50 multiplied by 1 for no expected profits, 5 for some expected profits, 10 for commercial release, or 50 for professional/industrial commercial release.

For an epic RPG $200-500 multiplied by the same.


That said, there are some good writers around who will work for free in exchange for having creative control and additng a playable game to their portfolio.

Quote: Original post by chrispycreme
What should I plan to pay an experienced freelance writer to develop some characters and a story for my game? Are they typically paid by the hour or on a per word or per page basis? Thanks in advance.

Judging by the commercial freelance writing industry, the going rate seems to be around £200* per diem. However, this isn't for creative writing as such, but mostly for non-fiction / copywriting. (Corporate marketing, white papers, articles for websites, that sort of thing.)

There's a lot less demand for 'pure' creative writers, so many tend to do both forms. You may be able to find new creative writers willing to work for less than the sum I've quoted above, but bear in mind that I live in London (which is expensive to live in or near), and that that figure is at the _low_ end of the range.

Why is it so high? By definition, freelancers aren't salaried, so they don't get any job security. While that figure looks immense, bear in mind that, once the contract is over, that writer then has to find another employer and that means he might have to spend the next month looking for new clients. And he ain't getting paid in the meantime.

Salaried people earn quite a lot less per day, but they know _exactly_ when their next paycheck is coming in and they don't have to worry about National Insurance contributions, accountants or Self-Assessment forms.


--
Sean Timarco Baggaley

(In the UK, most writers will have their own limited-liability company due to quirks of the tax regime here; the US industry is probably somewhat different. And, yes, I do this for a living now.)

I am a professional freelance writer. It is common to be paid by the hour, not by the word. My fee is $25 an hour, which is pretty minimal. However, I usually write boring things like articles or technical documents, although I have worked on video games too. If you're looking for a freelance writer to help with writing for a video game I would be willing to charge much less.

There are so many variables here - do you just want a backstory along with a cast of suitable characters or do you need a fully interactive story with branching plots that correspond to player actions? The way I usually charge is to find out exactly what work is involved and then give you a quote that covers all the work - this is a flat fee (and can't go up unless the client adds work not specified at the start) and I automatically sign over all IP to my clients so there are no future quibbles about ownership/royalties, etc.

Aside from running my satirical news site; I've been designing and producing games - and writing game scripts and stories - for twelve years now and would be happy to give you a quote for the work you want...

Like Gossiper, I've also generally worked with flat fees, but I've also sometimes used per word rates to estimate the flat fees, usually at the rate of 20-25 cents per word. With the larger companies I worked for (Bioware and TimeGate), flat rates were used. As with Gossiper, I'd be happy to quote rates if you'd like. Just drop a message here and I'll email you back.

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